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Having Lunch with the Cormorants
The sun of Baja California beat relentlessly down on the calm waters of Bahia Magdalena. We were on a small fishing boat, gently rocked by the soft waves of the Pacific. I shared that confined space with Michele, Cinzia, Maurizia, and Giulio, as well as the ever-faithful Lupo, the constant mascot of my travels in Baja.
The air was thick with the scent of salt, seaweed, and that untamed wilderness that only the Mexican peninsula can offer. Up until that moment, our excursion had been a peaceful marine stroll.
The sea, a deep and almost motionless blue, seemed to hide its secrets beneath a glassy surface, but nature, as we know, has its sudden rhythms. It all began with a subtle change in the texture of the water. A few hundred metres from our bow, the surface started to ripple. There was no wind, yet the sea seemed to boil. Michele stood up, squinting to focus on the horizon. He pointed to a dark, immense shadow moving swiftly beneath the water’s surface.
A school of sardines, gigantic and compact like a single living organism, had just entered the bay.
The shadow moved fluidly, shifting shape, expanding and contracting to evade invisible predators likely chasing them from the depths. The children stopped talking, captivated by that dark mass that transformed the colour of the sea.
Then, we heard the sound.
At first, it was just a distant whisper, like the rustling of wind through dry leaves. Within seconds, the whisper turned into a deep rumble, a frantic beating that made the air vibrate.
We looked up, and the sky lost its blinding blue. A black cloud was descending upon us. Thousands of cormorants, in dense and chaotic formations, had intercepted the school of sardines and were diving towards the bay.
It was a scene of primordial power. The cormorants weren’t simply flying; they were plunging like arrows shot from an invisible army. The sky darkened, covered by their black, glossy wings. The impact of the cormorants hitting the water created a deafening sound, a continuous and violent percussion. Splash, splash, splash.
Hundreds of sleek bodies pierced the surface of the sea simultaneously, disappearing beneath the waves only to re-emerge seconds later with a silvery flicker clutched in their beaks.
Michele and I exchanged amazed glances, not out of fear, but from the sheer emotion of sharing such an intense moment.
The smell of the ocean had grown sharper, laden with the scent of fish and the frantic activity of those animals. I could feel the adrenaline coursing through my veins. We were tiny spectators, granted access to the grandest theatre in the world. There were no filters, no screens—just the raw and magnificent law of survival playing out mere inches from our faces.
The frenzied feast lasted perhaps twenty minutes, though time seemed to have stood still. Slowly, the school of sardines managed to push towards safer depths, or perhaps it simply scattered. The fury subsided as quickly as it had begun. The thunder of wings diminished. Many cormorants, now satiated, floated on the water with ruffled feathers and proud gazes, resting before taking flight back to the coast.
Silence returned to envelop Bahia Magdalena, broken only by the laboured breaths of a few birds and the low hum of our boat’s idling engine. The surface of the sea was littered with tiny bubbles and drifting feathers, the only remnants of the battle that had just unfolded.
Michele slumped back onto his seat, running a hand through his hair, a wide, astonished smile on his face. “Incredible,” he whispered, shaking his head. His wife nodded, thanking me for the spectacle we had just witnessed.
Jokingly, I told him I’d been following that school of sardines for two years and knew this would happen… but then, of course, I admitted I had nothing to do with it—it was simply the nature of Baja California.
Baja California had given us a rare gift, showing us the wild, beating heart of our planet. And experiencing it together made that fragment of time absolutely perfect.